If you're considering replacing a submersible deep well pump with a more efficient model, you may have questions like, how long does it take to replace a water pump? Several factors influence the installation time. Let’s chat through each step of water pump replacement and find out for ourselves!
Follow these essential steps to replace your old pump and improve your home's water supply:
Step 1: Screw the well pump and motor ends together. The type of pump will affect how easy it is to assemble. After reading the manual we sent, this should take about a couple of minutes.
Step 2: Splice the submersible water pump wire extension cable onto a 6 ft pigtail. If you’ve never done a splice before, go slow to ensure a solid connection for a reliable water supply. After reading the manual again, this should take 10 minutes at most.
Step 3: Attach safety rope to pump eyelet. This helps protect your new pump's lifespan by preventing the weight from resting solely on the wire or piping. Wait another 5 minutes.
Step 4: If you are using a poly pipe, which we recommend for efficient water supply and enhanced energy savings, unroll it and allow it to warm up and relax. Then, attach the appropriate plumbing.
Warming up the poly pipe can take a little while, so it may be helpful to do this and then move on to other steps before attaching all the plumbing. Let’s allow for 1-2 hours here, but with the assumption that step 5 and our bucket test can also be completed in this period.
Step 5: Assemble the well seal and associated plumbing for the top of your well. Thread wire and safety rope through the smaller, secondary hole in the well seal. This step should be accomplished within our 1-2 hour time frame.
Optional Bucket Test: Place the water pump in a large bucket of water with the inlet fully submerged. Wire your pump to its control box and the control box to either a GFCI outlet or a breaker box.
Once all wiring is completed and the pump is hooked up to AC power, the water pump should automatically start pumping. We recommend this test to ensure your wiring has been properly executed and to listen for any unusual noises that could signal early wear and tear. Once you have completed this step, turn off the AC power source. This should be accomplished within our 1-2 hour time frame.
Step 6: Lower water pump into well, careful to not hit the pump against the sides of the well casing. Depending on how deep the well is and where you’d like to place the pump, this could take up to 10 minutes or so with a polypipe, or much longer with a rigid pipe. We’ll assume polypipe since rigid pipe needs specialized tools and is normally not suitable for a DIY job.
Step 7: Now wire in the well pump pressure switch (if you’re using a pressure tank or pressure system). The pressure switch will be between your breaker box and starter box, and will regulate when your water pump turns on based on the water pressure. The well pump would turn on when your water pressure is too low, and switch off when it starts to become too high. Let’s assume about twenty minutes to ensure all wiring is in line with our manual.
So with all steps laid out plainly we’re looking at about a three-hour install. This doesn’t include breaks or the need to call our support folks if there’s a question or issue. But we feel confident that the majority of installs can be accomplished within an afternoon, especially if you’ve looked through the manual beforehand and have an accurate understanding of what each of your steps should look like.
If you are curious about how much you can save by going the DIY-install route with a more efficient model, check out this article about the average cost of a well pump install.
RPS prides itself on being easily accessible for both pre- and post-sales, so if you have any questions you can go ahead and call us at (855)-374-1296 or email us at help@ruralpowersystems.com.
We can chat through each step of the water pump replacement process to ensure that you are confident in your abilities to work with our products. We hope to hear from you soon, and look forward to helping where we can!
